In this reading journal I will post the contents of and my thoughts on any books I read, regardless of whether or not I liked it or even finished it.

Saturday, May 11, 2013

AMBITION

TITLE: AMBITION

AUTHOR: JULIE BURCHILL

Pages: 372

Date: 11/05/2013

Grade: 3.5

Details: Received from Corvus Books

Through Nudge

Own

Susan
Street is ambitious. There is nothing,
absolutely nothing, she won’t do to get her dream job. She is determined to
become the editor of the Sunday Best newspaper. When the book starts it seems
that she may have achieved her goal. The current editor is lying in hotel bed
where he has spent his last living minutes having sex with her, and if she had
a hand in his demise, she’s is quick to destroy the evidence before calling in
the authorities.

Picture Susan’s disappointment when she arrives back
in the office only to find that the paper has a new owner and Tobias X Pope has
no intention of just giving the editor’s job to her, at least not without her
fulfilling a few of his demands. Pope will set Susan six tasks, all devised to
break her. If she completes all of them, the job will be hers. If she breaks
before she has come to the end of the last task, she will have lost everything.

Susan
Street is ambitious. She’s come from nowhere
and has done whatever happened to be necessary to make it as far as she has,
and she has no intention of giving up on her dream now, regardless of what the
price might be. And so she allows Pope to take her on a depraved journey,
designed to humiliate and destroy her. From a tattoo parlour in London, to Rio and from Sun City, via New
York to Thailand,
Susan submits to all sorts of deprived sexual acts, keeping her eye on the prize
all the time.

The rest of Susan’s life refuses to sit on the
backburner while she working on her career though. The relationship with the
man she’s living with goes from indifferent to worse, she falls in love and
lust with Pope’s son and rivals and enemies old and new are determined to
destroy her any whichever way they can.

Susan’s life has just become a lot more interesting
and scandalous than the stories she edits. A happy ending seems unlikely.

The front cover blurb from the author herself
announces that this book

“Makes Fifty Shades
of Grey look like Anne of Green Gables”

And I guess that is one way of putting is. Except that
there really is nothing in this book that resembles the Fifty Shades book. E.L.
James’ book was a romance, be it a steamy one. This book is nothing like a
romance. In fact it is quite the opposite of a romantic tale. While there is a
lot of quite shocking sex in this book there is a distinct lack of intimacy and
romance. The characters in ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ evoked emotions in the reader
and showed character development as the story went on. The characters in this
book read more like caricatures of a time – the 1980’s and cling unashamedly to
their lack of morals. There is absolutely no doubt what sort of a man Tobias X
Pope is. He fires Susan seconds after throwing a glass of water over her chest
only to call her that evening and offer her the job back. What do you mean,
playing her? And when they meet in a restaurant the following statement by him
removes all doubt about his character:

“Punctuality! One of
the great virtues! (…) And so much more important than all those milk-and-water
so-called virtues like honesty, decency and loyalty. I call those vices:
soul-sapping things only to be indulged in by those who’ve cancelled their
subscription to the human race.”

And he makes no secret of his intentions either:

“You do what I want,
and you get what you want. Or you break”

And the same is true for Susan. If she ever had a
heart she’s learned how to hide it well. Susan is not just ambitions; she is
ambition personified. She has no shame and no scruples when it comes to
achieving her goals. There are one or two occasions when it seems like things
like morals and friendship might halt her progress but her drive to succeed
manages to squash such feeble sentiments before she finds herself in real
danger of having to give up on her dream. Having said that, she did make me
smile on quite a few occasions:

“Taking the dirt out
of sex seems to me as self-defeating as taking the taste out of food.”

This may be a sex filled book; it is not a sexy read.
I found nothing tantalising or exciting in the descriptions of the scenes Susan
finds herself in. In fact, I can’t help feeling that they were written to shock
the reader. But then again, that can be said for the rest of the book too. A
reader picking up this book hoping to find a story in which loves brings
redemption, or a read that will titillate and excite them will end up
disappointed. Read this book as a hard-hitting, well written, at times funny
but also shocking portrayal of the (lack of) morals during the Yuppie era, and
you have a fascinating experience on your hands.

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About Me

My name is Marleen. I'm Dutch but have been living in Ireland for well over 15 years now. I have a passion and love for reading and books. Since early 2008 I have been lucky enough to have been working part time in the library in Bailieborough, Co. Cavan where among other things I run the library reading group.
I will read almost anything that has words in it, and post my thoughts on everything I read in this blog:

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In this blog I write my thoughts on every book I read. Some I will have brought home from the library, some will have been bought while others will have been sent to me for review. I do not get paid for reading and reviewing any books and all opinions are mine and mine alone. Whether a book was borrowed, bought or received will be indicated at the top of every review.

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